Cancer could be so much worse

On October 4, 2019 I parked at my local cancer treatment centre for my last cycle of chemotherapy. I was connected to the poisons that I had come to accept as part of my life for what seemed like forever. In reality, it had been about eighteen weeks from the start of my chemotherapy to my last cycle, but it was such a significant change to my life as I knew it that chemotherapy came to define my life more than I had wanted. But that all changed that Friday morning. I received the nerve-damaging drug oxaliplatin for the last time, then had the last baby-bottle of the mucous membrane destroying fluorouracil connected for the last time. I would still feel the adverse effects of these drugs for the next few weeks - cold dysesthesiae from oxaliplatin and GI side effects and mucositis from the fluorouracil -  but that would be the last time I would experience them. My life, my normal former life, will soon be given back to me. I took a few pictures to commemorate the various "las...

I received my last cycle of chemo today. After all of the dramatics and problems I went through this week , this was by no means a certainty. Even when I presented at the cancer treatment centre I was not counting my proverbial chickens; there could still be complications that could result in my treatment being delayed or cancelled entirely.  And that is very nearly what happened. Remember the dance of a thousand steps that I had to do because my nurses couldn't get blood return from my PICC? Yeah... that happened again . But this time I was able to tilt and stretch my head in just the right way so that my delightful nurse - who is maybe  five minutes older than my son but is still a very capable nurse - was able to get blood return. Phew! Crisis avoided. You see, last time this happened I received my chemotherapy up to the point of my 'baby bottle' infusion through a newly-started peripheral IV. I am an easy IV start and I have good, robust veins, yet after two hours ...

"Don't count your chickens before they're hatched." Growing up, a lot of life's little lessons were distilled down into cute little catchphrases that maybe  still had some everyday meaning to people. But as America and Russia fought a Cold War for global supremacy and ran a Space Race for supremacy in the heavens, fewer and fewer people had any firsthand knowledge of poultry husbandry and so the saying rapidly lost its direct meaning and became more of a catchall to espouse a philosophy than a direct metaphor to an experience that most individuals had shared. But as a pre-teen, my family did keep a small flock of chickens so the saying actually does  have some direct meaning to me. Still, if you have never seen a chicken lay an egg or seen an egg hatch into a - let's face it - totally ugly and disgusting-looking chick (they don't get to be cute until their fluffy feathers dry several hours after hatching), you probably know what this saying means. Don...